Instantly, like my words had switched him on, he spun me to face him. My chin was gently tugged upward, and his lips found my new scar. “When I look at you, sadness is not an emotion I feel,” he whispered, the words skating over the surface of the uneven skin. “I feel joy. I feel intrigue. I feel obsession. I feel as though I should not be looking at your face as much as I do. I feel…love. Yes,” he said, affirming it. “I feel love.”
Love?
I knew Milan had always felt some semblance of love for his family, that he’d alwaysfelteven when he didn’t understand that he did, but to feel love required him to feel the way I did. Itwas knowing that the combustion of emotions within wasn’t our love, but that the quiet, creeping sense of calm was instead.
Loving Milan didn’t look like huge bouquets of flowers and cried confessions of love in the rain—and not only because he hated plants and especially the rain, but because our love was knowing that he thought navy socks were bad luck, and how he brought me coffee in bed with the exact combination of milk and creamer I liked, as if he’d measured it. It was knowing what limited us and having an extra pair of hands to break it down. It was remembering what the demons looked like, but knowing that they couldn’t hurt us here.
“I love you,” I whispered, capturing his wide eyes and making them understand too. I pressed his hand to my chest. “Every part of you.”
His fingers touched my face slowly, dusting over my jaw, my nose, my temples as if that would make him trust me. His mouth opened, and though I expected no sound to come, he stated proudly, “All I am is what I feel for you. I love you in every part of my body, even in my mind. I love you in ways I cannot understand butfeel.The world where you are is my favorite place.”
I kissed him deeply, forgetting the scar and my unsteady bones and limbs, and hoped that he would still love me after what I was about to do.
“Milan?”
“Sicily?”
“It wasn’t Bella and Fiore’s fault.”
“I am aware.” He sighed, a sheepish expression crossing his face. “I saidthatword.”
“Say it again.” I laughed.
His lips twitched. Milan leaned in close and whispered, “Fuck.”
With what Fiore, Bella, and I were about to do, I had a feeling he would be repeating it over and over in a mere few hours.
30
MILAN
After Francesco had climbedinto Sicily’s bed and I had refused to share the other side with him, I found myself outside the room, staring at my Consigliere playing cards with Matteo Bonafede, who was holding a sleeping Elena Ferrari curled in his lap.
Bella Fera and my cursed sister-in-law also happened to still be there.
“Milano.” Adrian smiled, holding his cards out toward me. “Here, you play instead.”
I took a seat beside him on the rusty hospital seats, still eyeing the two women who should have been anywhere but in front of me. “What will the punishment be for entertaining a card game with you, Bella Fera? Hung, drawn and quartered?”
“Milan,” Fiorella huffed. She was evidently tired, but it was rare that she was not in a state of disarray, so perhaps that was simply her natural look. “It’s not her fault.”
“I have been informed of this by my wife twice now, but who will pay for what Cesare did?” I shifted my attention to Bella who was shrinking into her seat. “Sicily may not want him harmed, but somebody hurt her, and I cannot let that go.”
Fiorella slapped her card down on the small wooden table between us, followed by Matteo, who was eyeing this exchange with raised brows. I noted his attempt to change the subject as he said quickly, “Remember when Sicily played poker?”
Adriano barked out a laugh. “She didn’tplaypoker; she attended, you cheated for her, and he freaked out that you were fucking his bride.”
“Matteoand Sicily?” Fiorella gaped, and Adriano nodded with an exaggerated roll of his eyes.
“Have we since established that Sicily and I have no interest in fucking?” Bonafede chuckled, kissing Elena’s temple.
I nodded once. I had known for a long time, maybe even on that day, that Matteo and my wife had not been in a sexual relationship, but she had turned out to be everything that I had not expected, and I had reacted like a fool.
A small smile tugged at the corners of my lips as I thought of how I loved her now, but it faded with how much time I had wasted not understanding that. The future,ourfuture, was bright, but the past was not, and Sicily had borne witness to that.
“I have seen your cock multiple times despite that,” I said, attempting to avoid thinking of the past or my wife fucking Matteo Bonafede. “It is at my house. You are her friend because she exaggerated the size of it.”
Bella blushed and frowned as if she had not heard the word ‘cock’ before. She was pregnant; I understood how babies were made.
